Frozen in Time

December 25, 2009 at 3:30 AM

"Should we take a picture of it?" said my son Brian, age 9, early this morning, as we both knelt down to feel the frozen grass.

"Mmmm," I said. How exactly do I explain? Brian was looking at something he'd rarely seen in his life: frost. Having been born in Pasadena, California, and living his whole life here, he simply hasn't seen much of the icy stuff. It's just frosty grass, my boy, pretty commonplace where I grew up in Colorado.

And yet -- it was quite beautiful, the way the grass glistened in the sun, like some little frost fairy had scattered glitter on everyone's lawn. In fact, the moment was equally beautiful: stopped in our tracks on our early morning walk, my son and I, together, discovering.

Impossible to capture in a photograph, though. Impossible to pin it down and hold it forever. I realized: I wanted to capture it just like he did.

I suppose these moments are the ones we seek to create during the holidays, and ironically enough, it's the memories of such moments that cause us so much grief sometimes during this time of year, so fraught with memories and meaning, timelessness and the keen awareness of time passing.

And yet, the moments come, every year, if you allow yourself to stop and notice them. You can't really create them, they just happen. When they do, capture them, keep them.